Effect of Replacing Thiophene by Selenophene on the Photovoltaic Performance of Wide Bandgap Copolymer Donors

Two polymers J75 and J76 with selenophene instead of thiophene on the conjugated side chain of benzodithiophene (BDT) unit or π bridges of polymer J71 were designed and synthesized, for investigating the effect of selenophene substitution on the photovoltaic performance of the conjugated polymer donors in comparison with J71. The selenophene π bridges in J76 can narrow optical band gap and red-shift absorption of the polymer film by ca. 25 nm, but the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) energy level (EHOMO) of J76 is up-shifted slightly by 0.04 eV. Two typical electron acceptors of fullerene derivative PC71BM and the nonfullerene acceptor m-ITIC were used to investigate photovoltaic performance of the polymer donors. For the PC71BM-based polymer solar cells (PSCs), J76 with selenophene π bridges shows the best power-conversion efficiency (PCE) of 8.40% in comparison with the J71-based device (PCE = 6.79%), benefitted from the red-shifted absorption, larger coherence length, purer average domains, an...